Recently at The IndieView

The most recent interviews at The IndieView starting with a refresher on the different kinds of interviews. 

The IndieView

This is an interview with a standard set of open ended questions. While they focus on a specific book, they also delve into the author's history as a writer and the path they took in becoming an indie author.

The BookView

This is a shorter interview format for authors who have already done an IndieView which focuses just on their most recent book.

Reviewer IndieView

These are interviews with reviewers who have their own review blog that delve into their approach to reviewing. A great way to find other book blogs you might like to follow. (For authors, there is also an extensive database of indie friendly review sites you might like to check out.)

Allirea's Realm

By invitation only, these are quirky, often irreverent interviews done by longtime Books and Pals follower, Allirea.


(Authors and reviewers interested in doing an IndieView should visit this page for details.)


Allirea’s Realm, coffee and conversation with Susanne O’Leary

"I think women who marry and have children young, like me, often dream of escaping and peeling off all those labels of being someone’s wife and mother and not having their own identity. Added to that, the role of diplomat’s wife also means you have to forget your own needs and wishes and never show your own persona or express an opinion. That was the theme in Finding Margo."


Indieview with Kelly Stone Gamble, author of They Call Me Crazy

"In order to write a book like this, a lot of people have suggested that I have to be a little crazy myself. I’m actually fairly normal. Well, sometimes."



IndieView with Paige Crutcher, author of The Odyssey of Falling

"I was inspired to write about loss, and how we view and deal with grief – particularly when growing up."


IndieView with Martin Roy Hill, author of Eden

"Eden is departure from my earlier books, which are all in the mystery, suspense, and thriller genres. But I wanted to explore questions about what do we really know about religion and science, and sci-fi was the perfect vehicle for that."


IndieView with Sandra Hutchison, author of The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire

"This provocative coming-of-age novel asks: Is there ever a time when doing the wrong thing might be exactly right?"


IndieView with Suzanne Steinberg, author of The Endless Control of Madness

"I was very angry that there seemed to be answers to mental illness but my mom was in risk of ending up homeless and in a permanent state of confusion. I felt that she fell through the cracks of the government’s mental health system and I wanted to understand why no one seemed to notice. So I wrote to understand ..."


IndieView with Brenda Vicars, author of Polarity in Motion

"We hear all the time about cases of adults who are wrongly imprisoned for various reasons.  I wondered if the same thing could happen to high school students."


IndieView with Nagendra Murti, author of Thar Express

"Essentially, looking at the sea of humanity on the streets of India, I’ve always wondered if any of them have interesting stories to tell. The idea came to me in bits and pieces during my various travels across the country."


BookView with DV Berkom, author of The Body Market

"Cruz was the result of an article I’d read about a teenage boy who worked for the drug cartels as a hit man from a young age and, when caught, confessed to over 800 murders. I wanted to explore the idea of someone so young being used that way (much like child soldiers in armed conflicts around the world) and so Cruz was born."


IndieView with Sydney Paige McCutcheon, author of Henry

"I have an older sister that protects me and there is a scene in the novel that really portrays that unique relationship between siblings, that I’m sure will have a few people nodding their heads in agreement."


IndieView with Wayne Hoss, author of A Sermon to Remember

"I was upset with my parents for refusing to let me trade my book for that brand new corvette. So much so, that I never tried writing a book again; and in fact, it never even crossed my mind again. I basically forgot all about writing a book at all."


BookView with Christine Meunier author of Learning to Fall

" For any reader who loves ponies and wants to learn about their care as well as enjoy a fictional story, this series is for them!"

Author Interview: Sean Sweeney

I write escapism fiction. I write for the people that hate reality. Their lives aren’t doing so well, so they jump into a book to escape their lives. 

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I think I came out of the womb writing, to be honest. Actually, I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 14 years old. That’s when I met the man—two men, actually—who became my mentors: Bill Gilman, who worked then for the Sentinel & Enterprise, and Mark Ambrose, who was my first semester Freshman English teacher at Fitchburg High School. Bill was a sportswriter then (he’s now the editor of the Tewskbury Patch, an AOL/Huffington Post company) and he covered Fitchburg High football games; he was the one who helped me slide my foot in the door. Mark gave excellent writing assignments that brought out a student’s creative side and made you really think while brainstorming, and he’d always give a new take, like an editor, on how a story should be written.

Who are your favorite authors and how do you think they’ve influenced your writing?

Professor Tolkien, right from the start. When I began this journey in 2003, I wanted to be a fantasy author, and I wanted to write like Tolkien. I wanted to be descriptive. I wanted to create a world that felt lived in. I think I accomplished that, and that story will continue within the next month or so with The Shadow Looms. R.A. Salvatore is a New York Times bestseller who lives a few towns away from me in Leominster, and he was the one who convinced me to write my first novel; I loved Bob’s fight scenes, and I knew I could write like that. Steven Savile is a British author living in Sweden, and I read everything he writes; he has such a way with the written word that I’ve never believed possible. He’s always at the ready with advice. He was the one who convinced me to write thrillers. Kevin J. Anderson is a prolific science-fiction writer who lives in Colorado Springs, a man who writes even while he sleeps. I absolutely want to be like him; he publishes books that resemble doorstops. People say I’m rather prolific, but I don’t even come close to matching KJA.

You’ve worked for several years as a sportswriter for multiple newspapers, I believe both as a staff writer and as a freelancer. How do you think your journalism experience has helped you as a fiction author?

Journalism has taught me how important it is to write under deadline. Every night, I have to submit my game story by such and such a time, which has forced me to write rather rapidly, on a time constraint. I hit my deadline constantly; there are certain times in the summer where a baseball game will begin rather late, and I end up phoning in a brief story for the paper, yet I write a full story for the web after deadline. I’m still writing on a time constraint, technically, because the editor is just as tired as I am and wants to go home. But seriously… writing fiction isn’t much different, and this is something I learned from Kevin J. Anderson. He meets his deadlines with his fiction, and I try to do the same thing, even though I self-publish. Any author making a living at this is writing under a time constraint. I work on a rather tight schedule: I look at a calendar and say that such and such a date is a deadline for my work. I can usually write a large novel in 2-3 months, then give myself some time to recuperate before I dive into the edits. From conception to final edit takes about 9-10 months nowadays. Not exactly a daily newspaper speed, but then again, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I can release four or five novels, whether adult or YA (YA is usually shorter in word count length), a year using this method.

Have you ever had a job that wasn’t writing related? If so, what?

I’ve worked at a Subway restaurant, my local radio station (although I did write news), as well as selling cell phones. Other than the radio station, not too glamorous.

Your first novels were all either fantasy or science-fiction and written under a pen name. Are you keeping the two personas separated or can you tell us about your alter-ego and what he or she has written?

When I began writing, I wanted to honor one of the authors that I had read in Mark Ambrose’s class. Robert Cormier lived in Leominster and was a prolific young adult author who wrote The Chocolate War, I am the Cheese, etc., and I found out a couple of years after that, while a cub reporter for the Sentinel & Enterprise (I started as a sophomore), he had written columns for our paper in the 1970s and 1980s as John Fitch IV. Interesting, I had thought at the time. I had decided to write under the name John Fitch V as an homage to Cormier. That name I have since retired.

My first six novels are under that pen name; I call those the “Classic” novels. Most of them are fantasy, like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (and if you think I said that for the SEO hits, you know me too well), while I wrote a Star Wars-ish space opera and a historical sports novel that involves a bit of time travel.

Is it true that you actually have five pen names and I haven’t discovered them all yet?

LOL, that is incorrect. The running joke, folks, is due to my author friends considering me to be rather prolific, and they think I’m writing other authors’ books. Supposedly I’m writing women’s fiction under the name Beth Orsoff and YA paranormal under the name Imogen Rose.

You’re definitely prolific. How many full-length novels did you release in 2011? So far in 2012?

I released six books in 2011: The first three Jaclyn Johnson novels, the first Obloeron prequel (The Rise of the Dark Falcon), Royal Switch, and Zombie Showdown. I’ve already released two novels in 2012, Eminent Souls and Cold Altar. Two more are on the way: the second Obloeron prequel (The Shadow Looms) and Federal Agent, the fourth Jaclyn Johnson novel. I may sneak in a YA book before the new year, too.

I don’t think it is a secret that I’m a fan of your Jaclyn Johnson, code name Snapshot series, which I believe are also your most popular books. Some people love them. Judging from some of the reviews on Amazon, other people don’t like them at all. What do you think it is about Jaclyn that attracts such extremes in opinion?

I think it’s the believability of the character, or it’s because the haters are just internet trolls/book snobs, but that’s neither here nor there. Look, I write escapism fiction. I write for the people that hate reality. Their lives aren’t doing so well, so they jump into a book to escape their lives. That’s where I come in. Jaclyn is a kick-ass, half-blind CIA Counterterrorism agent aided by technological enhancements, mainly in the form of a Heads Up Device that resembles a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses that she has to wear constantly. Jaclyn is a cross between James Bond, Mitch Rapp and Lora Craft. She is a shoot first, ask questions later kind of chick who was trained during her teenage years, just after 9-11. She was trained to be heartless, but as we’ve seen (SPOILER ALERT), she has a soft side for a certain man. She also has a James Bond-esque car that usually causes a bit of destruction. I’ve received comments from people who love Jaclyn, and some people who don’t like the books, either because of the believability or because the books are overly descriptive. You’re not going to win over everyone; there are people who put down Tolkien.

Many of your books take place on your home turf, whether in North-Central Massachusetts where you grew up or Boston, the nearest big city. But some of your Jaclyn Johnson books are in places far from home. I paid careful attention to how well you caught the feel of Las Vegas and whether you got the geography right, and you got it right. Have you visited these towns or, if not, how do you get these kind of things right?

Boston is like my second home, and it was easy to take a train ride right into the old city and walk around for a few hours, snapping photos to get the descriptions right at a later time, and I also wrote notes to myself as I walked; one note that I had jotted down when I had approached the Marriott Long Wharf from the north is that the hotel looked like an old-style passenger ship complete with its eastern end resembling that ship’s prow. For some of the other books, like Rogue Agent and Double Agent, it was a lot of map study. I love geography, and I love topography, two subjects I excelled at in school. A story can be envisioned by studying a map. Google Maps and Bing Maps are huge in this. Google Earth is even better, especially in a big town such as Las Vegas, where you can get down to street level and see where the Google car drove, getting a 360-degree picture. It makes it so easy to write on a limited budget.

What other books are on the horizon for you?

Well, I’m deep into the first draft of the fourth Jaclyn Johnson novel, Federal Agent. The second Obloeron prequel is coming out before the end of the summer, I believe. I have YA books in my mind, a fifth (and a sixth, seventh and eighth) Jaclyn Johnson novel, another mystery, as well as some sci-fi down the road. I have enough material to write about. I’ll be here for quite a long time.

What was the last book you read by a fellow indie and what were its strengths and weaknesses?

I read the first few pages of one book last week, and I just couldn’t get into it. It had a massive point of view shift that threw me out of the story. There are some books that have this problem, and I think too much like an editor sometimes. Other authors are just fantastic at dialogue and the quick hit sentences.

Thanks for the opportunity, Al. I really appreciate it, and stop playing snake with me. J

For More Sean:

Visit Sean's website, like his facebook page, or follow him on twitter. You can also like Jaclyn Johnson's page on facebook.

Find Sean's books at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble, or Smashwords.

For those by John Fitch V, visit Amazon US, Amazon UK, or Barnes and Noble.

Reviews

Double Agent

Eminent Souls

Model Agent

Rogue Agent

Author Interview: Kristie Leigh Maguire

Note: Authors interested in participating in our author interview series, we're once again looking for volunteers. See this page for details.

"Our readers say that they can’t tell who wrote what. That’s what made it so great for us."

In these interviews I’ll often ask if an author always knew they wanted to be a writer. It’s one of those questions that are cliché, but often have good answers. But from your bio I suspect the answer to this would be no. Instead, why don’t you tell us, what prompted you to become a writer?

I’ve always been an avid reader but had never seriously considered becoming a writer although the thought crossed my mind occasionally. However, that changed when I was living in Japan and couldn’t find books to read that were written in English. This may sound strange now but remember it was 1997 before the e-book craze took off with the advent of good e-readers like the Kindle, the Nook, and the Ipad. It may sound stupid but I decided that if I wanted a book to read, I’d have to write one myself. Thus my career as a writer was born. I’m just an avid reader turned writer and author.

You like to say that you “were indie, when indie wasn’t cool.” You were an indie before there was an ebook market or affordable print-on-demand services available. How long have you been indie publishing and what was it like as an indie before the ebook revolution started?

I have been indie publishing since the beginning of my writing career, which began in 1997 when I was living in Japan. After writing my first book, I researched publishing. Talk about putting the cart before the horse but if I had researched publishing before writing my book, I most likely would have never written the book. Since I came to writing later in my life (OK I wasn’t over the hill yet but the hill was looming in the close distance!), I decided I didn’t have time to wait years and years trying to find an agent who would then have to convince the “Publishing Gods” to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I discovered alternative publishing through my research and decided that was the route for me to take.

What was it like before the e-book revolution?

Like rolling a boulder uphill with your nose!

Without the advent of a good e-reader, there would have been no e-book revolution. When I first started selling e-books, I sold them in PDF format only with a download from my website. I would also make a floppy disk (remember those?) with my book on it and mail them to people who ordered my book through my website.

However, Indie Publishing was never just about e-books. I started my Indie Author career with paperback books. My first paperback book was published through an alternative publishing house called Great Unpublished. Talk about the days! The name of the book was Desert Triangle. Yes, the very same book that I now have published as Desert Heat. It was a best seller at Great Unpublished. I met a lot of wonderful people at the forums at GU and a lot of not so wonderful people as well. Those not so wonderful people became the reason I pulled my book from GU and went my own way.

I came to e-books through another forum. The name of the forum escapes my memory now but I do remember loving the forum and the great people there. The lady who ran the forum is now dead. Anyway, that forum was my introduction to e-books which I had never heard of before.

I imagine many of the things involved in being an indie author are easier than when you started. Are there things that are harder?

Hmmmm. I honestly can’t think of any unless it would be getting noticed among the crowd of other indie authors who are now on the scene. J

Most of your books are in the romance genre. However, unlike a lot of authors, they are spread across the full spectrum, from sweet romance to hot-and-spicy romance. Why the wide range and does this confuse your readers?

I do believe my writing a sweet romance confused my loyal fans that were used to the name of Kristie Leigh Maguire being synonymous with hot and spicy.

My reason for writing a sweet romance? I wrote it for my elderly mother who had read my erotic romance books and thought that I did all those things I wrote about in my books. I kept telling her that the books were FICTION but she wasn’t buying it. I tried to redeem myself in her eyes by writing Second Chances. She loved Wyoming so I set the book in Wyoming just for her. It was very hard for me to keep it on the ‘sweet side of things’. Second Chances is now my bestselling book.

To give us an idea of the range why don’t you give us a description of Second Chances and Desert Heat.

OK, will do although to get the full effect of the difference in the range, I’m giving the long description for Desert Heat.

Second Chances: Love Lost, Love Found

Jane Porter's world is turned upside down when her 'almost fiancé' Mike Farley goes off the deep end and marries the beautiful and fiery Samantha Jo Smith, a girl he met just a few short weeks earlier at the Wild Horse Saloon in Casper, Wyoming. Jane goes into a deep depression but in her heart-of-hearts she can't deny that she still loves Mike.

Samantha soon realizes that her hasty marriage to Mike was a mistake. She can't forget her dreams of becoming a country and western superstar. Mike can't forget about Jane.

Through it all, Mike's mother Liz and Jane's father Jim come closer together as they struggle with the mess their children have made of their lives and the day-to-day struggle of running their neighboring ranches.

What will Samantha do? What will happen to Mike? Will Jane have a second chance at love? Will Jim and Liz realize it is never too late for love?

Find out in Kristie Leigh Maguire's Second Chances: Love Lost, Love Found. Set in rural Wyoming, Second Chances is a sweet contemporary western romance that will warm your heart. One reader stated, "I read it through in an evening, and felt as if I had spent that evening with 'salt of the earth' folk." Another reader said, "I loved the double, no triple, second chance. It was a very sweet ending."

Desert Heat: What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas

Romance of the Year - Affaire de Coeur Magazine
Affairs of the Heart (Book One)

"Maguire singes readers' eyes with the fire of her love scenes." - Romantic Times Book Club Magazine

"Come take a journey to the Mojave Desert where the weather is hot and passion runs high. Ms. Maguire weaves an erotica filled with more than just fun and games." - Just Erotic Romance

*****

Do you like your romance novels hot, steamy, and ultra-sensual? Do you yearn for something different, something special, something you've only dared live in your wildest fantasies?

Are you ready?

...for a writer who can elicit feelings of exquisite passion with words that slither over your moistened lips and curl themselves around your tongue?

...for an author whose love scenes sizzle with sexy, scintillating, scandalous emotions that will heat your brain to the boiling point and set your body on fire?

Are you ready?

...to meet an author who is capable of taking you to places you've never been before?

...to take a step above the average, and enter Kristie Leigh Maguire's realm of fiery intimacy: the exotic, erotic, delicious, capricious world of your ultimate fantasies?

Are you ready?

...to read Desert Heat: What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas, the first novel in the ultra-sensual Affairs of the Heart series by Kristie Leigh Maguire?

Kristie Leigh Maguire presents the ultimate in ultra-sensual modern day romance. She takes you "beyond the kiss" without crossing that tenuous line between eroticism and vulgarity. Her characters are real everyday, ordinary people, not impossibly created heroes and heroines who could only be real in the pages of your average romance novel.

Don't expect the typical romance story with this novel. There are no shrinking violets or shy maiden virgins who long to be taken against their will in Desert Heat. Marcie is a savvy businesswoman who knows what she wants and is willing to go against the odds to get it.

Marcie and Steve have a long-time and mutually satisfying marriage. However, when career changes force them to move from a metropolitan city in Texas to a small crossroads town in the Mojave Desert in Southern California, a surprise is in store for them that neither Marcie nor Steve could have ever anticipated in a million years. Marcie commits the unthinkable. She falls in love with her handsome new boss, Jim. How will Marcie handle being in love with both Steve and Jim? Will this be the end of Marcie's marriage to Steve, the guy who has been by her through thick and thin?

Read Desert Heat and get swept away to another world. Come visit the desert where it is always hot, hot, hot! Live with Marcie, Steve and Jim as they explore the shades of difference between love, sex and friendship. You may never view love or the desert through the same eyes again!

Continue Marcie's story with Cabin Fever: And the Flames Burned Higher - Affairs of the Heart (Book Two).

To keep your readers guessing, you also have a book that you’ve described as “adult romantic comedy” and I described as satire, No Lady and Her Tramp. First, tell us what No Lady is about.

One Amazon reviewer of No Lady and Her Tramp stated, "If you like a book filled with sex (Linda Lovelace would have a "hard' time keeping up), revenge, espionage (trailer park style), gossip (move over Barbara Eden-Harper Valley), feuding neighbors (yeah, Hatfields and McCoys), I guarantee, you will not be disappointed."

Top Ten - Preditors & Editors Poll

A quirky hysterically hilarious read that is down and dirty!

No Lady and Her Tramp will have you rolling in the aisles as you follow the exploits of the residents of President Park, the trailer park to top all trailer parks. When Beth Ann Dixon buys herself a computer and decides to write a steamy erotic novel, her husband, Billy Ray, can't do much of anything right, not even shoot a gun. Janet Higgins is the resident Peeping Tom - and Troy Finkmyer is the guy we all love to hate. Everybody gets into the act and there are showdowns all over Grapevine - Grapevine, Kentucky that is. Shirley Snodgrass is the local gossip columnist for the Grapevine Gazette and records it all in her column, 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine'.

These two authors, Kristie Leigh Maguire and Mark Haeuser, by putting their talents together, have written a very funny book laced with pure, unadulterated steam.

Another way No Lady and Her Tramp is different from your other books is that it was co-written with Mark Haeuser. Tell us about what prompted this project and how the process was different for you.

I LOVED writing with my co-author Mark Haeuser. It was a totally different experience than writing solo. Our creative writing juices mingled so well together. We each sparked the other to write something that we would never have done on our own. This experience has been the highlight of my writing career to date.

Mark and I have never met in the real world. We were virtual writing partners. We did not outline (I never do). I would write a chapter and send it to him. He would read it and then write his chapter and send it back to me. So on and so forth for the whole book. Our only agreement was not to reveal who wrote each chapter. Our readers say that they can’t tell who wrote what. That’s what made it so great for us.

What prompted this project? It came from a forum that I ran for many years, NUW (Not the Usual Way). The only requirement for belonging to the forum was to be an independently published author – thus the name of the forum. One time we were all discussing writing with a co-author versus writing solo. I issued a challenge for someone who wrote in a totally different genre than me to become my co-author on a book. Mark, who wrote action/adventure, wanted to co-author with me on a manuscript. I accepted and No Lady and Her Tramp was the end result. What fun we had writing that book!

What is the last book you read by a fellow indie author and what did you think of it?

I have been reading so much lately and most of what I have been reading is free books that I have downloaded to my Kindle. Most of the time I honestly don’t know if the books are indie published or trad published so it’s hard for me to answer this question.

I recently read a book that has stuck with me long after I finished reading it. It is All Different Kinds of Free by Jessica McCann. I don’t know if she is indie pubbed or trad pubbed. I do know that the book is based on a true story and I highly recommend the book.

You’ve lived all over the world. Tell us some of the places you’ve lived and the things you liked (or if you want, didn’t like) about a few.

My favorite place that I lived was Aruba. I loved the weather, the beaches, and the people. I cried when we had to leave.

I can’t say that Japan was a favorite place to live but it was the one I anticipated the most going to and the one that was the most disappointing to me. I suppose I had such high expectations that the reality naturally would not live up to my dreams of Japan. I wrote a book about living in Japan titled Emails from the Edge which is no longer available in paperback or e-book format. I had a lot of people who loved this book but I also had a lot of people who were highly critical of me for ‘telling it like it is’ (or was) for me living there.

One place that I dreaded going to but turned out to be a lot better than my expectations was Saudi Arabia, especially my first experience of living there. Hubby and I lived in Saudi Arabia on three different occasions. I met many people who became such great friends and made the experience of living in such a totally different culture worthwhile. I was in Saudi Arabia on 9/11 but that’s ‘a whole nuther subject’ in itself.

Tell us something about yourself that would surprise most people.

I am a preacher’s daughter. This would totally surprise the fans of my erotic romances. J

For more Kristie:

Visit Kristie's website or blog. Follow her on Twitter or like her Facebook page.

Purchase Kristie's books from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.

Reviews

No Lady and Her Tramp

Michael Crane: Author Interview

I think that’s where I really started to learn my strong points when it comes to writing. I wasn’t trying to come up with complicated plots. I was trying to write about real people.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I loved movies when I was little and I always thought I’d be a film maker. I loved seeing characters interact with each other and I loved watching storylines unfold. When I read my first chapter book in grade school (embarrassed to say this, but it was the novelization of the movie Arachnophobia—but we all had to start somewhere!), it was like I was watching a movie inside of my head. And I think that’s when I decided that I wanted to be a writer. Even before then, I was always fascinated by picture books and creating my own. I was a terrible at drawing, but I still enjoyed it dammit!

So far all of your available works are various kinds of short fiction or collections of the same. Which of the available book available do you think is your best and why?

Hands down, In Decline is my favorite and I think it represents my best writing as of now. It may not be my most popular book if you’re looking at it sales wise, but I really enjoyed writing those stories. A bunch of them were written during my time at Columbia College Chicago, and I think that’s where I really started to learn my strong points when it comes to writing. I wasn’t trying to come up with complicated plots. I was trying to write about real people. I might’ve made up the stories, but I was trying to come from it at an angle where somebody could read them and think that they actually happened. That the characters felt real enough to the reader(s).

In Decline is my favorite and I think your best too. Tell us about this collection and its inspiration.

I really appreciate that. I’ve heard a couple others tell me it’s their favorite as well, and I’m always thrilled when I hear it. I’m a huge fan of short stories. I have a terrible attention span and I’m always starting books and never finishing them. Nine out of ten times, it’s not even the author’s fault. I think that’s why I love short stories. I like seeing what happens in a limited amount of time. It’s fascinating to see how different writers begin and end their stories, because there is almost never a concrete ending. You’re always left wanting more, yet you still feel like the story’s complete.

I had a bunch of short stories that I was trying to get published. I’ve submitted to a bunch of different literary magazines, and every one of them got rejected. When I decided to put out a collection on my own, I picked out what I felt were the strongest stories. Also, they had to go together. I had a few stories that I really did want to include, but didn’t because they didn’t feel right in the collection.

I love writing about downtrodden characters, especially at that time because I was in a really dark place. I felt hopeless when it came to dating and relationships. It wasn’t working out for me, and I started to become depressed. I was convinced I was never going to find anybody. I think some of that bled through when I wrote a bunch of the stories. Sometimes you write what fits your mood. It’s a lot easier to write about somebody down on their luck when you feel that you’re going through somewhat of a tough time yourself.

And maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to come out with another collection like In Decline. I’m in a much different and happier place now. Not that the desire to write about depressed or unhappy characters is gone. I still think a story about somebody who’s struggling is far more exciting and entertaining than a story where everything is wonderful.

Your most recent release is Lessons IV: The Dead Carnival and Other Morbid Drabbles, the fourth collection in this series of “drabbles.” Explain what a drabble is and how you’ve ended up releasing four drabble collections.

M.P. McDonald is the one who told me about drabbles. I think we were talking about flash fiction one day and she asked me if I had ever attempted a drabble. Of course, my first reaction was, “What the hell is a drabble?” She explained that it’s a story that’s 100 words long. I read David McAfee’s The Lake and 17 Other Stories maybe a month or two before this was brought up, and that was a collection that was made up of a bunch of 100-word stories. It’s a brilliant, twisted little collection.

Then October hit and I felt like trying a new project. I thought I’d try the 100-word stories for fun and maybe publish them on Smashwords for free if I came up with a few. Since Halloween was coming up, I thought I’d try my hand at horror. I loved horror as a child. In grade school, I wrote tons of horror stories. They were really shitty stories. Mostly cheap Stephen King knock-offs, but I was doing it for fun at the time so it didn’t matter. I thought that writing horror would take me outside my comfort zone, and that’s one of the most valuable things I learned while I was at Columbia: If you only write what you’re comfortable with, then you’re never going to evolve as a writer.

I wrote the first drabble, Lessons, and to my surprise it turned out pretty good. I wrote a few more after that, and then I was on a roll. So, I decided what the hell? If I can come up with a decent number of drabbles, then maybe I can sell it as a collection. It was an experiment, and it was exciting to try out something new. It was untouched territory for me, so I was able to kind of go crazy with it.

I ended up doing a couple of collections because people seem to dig the drabbles. Amanda Hocking mentioned the first book on her blog and I think that’s when it really took off. I know I gained a bunch of fans because of her, and I can never thank her enough for that.

I never thought I’d turn it into a series. Just goes to show how much fun they are for me.

Does the 100 words count the title? Have you ever cheated and snuck in one that was 101 words?

I usually don’t count the title, unless it’s a ridiculously long title. For the most part, my titles are pretty short and to the point. So for me, either the story itself must be 100-words long, or if I’m going to include the title then the entire thing has to reach the 100 word limit.

When are you finally going to write that novel?

I have no idea. I’m doing my best to try my hand at longer works, but my love will always be short stories. My biggest fear of writing something longer is that it’s going to feel dragged out. At least with a short story… it’s short. Less of a chance of the story outstaying its welcome.

Your college major was in fiction writing. How has that education helped you as a writer? Are there any ways you think it has hurt?

When I found out you could major in such a thing, I was all in. After going to school for so long and being forced to take subjects that bored me to tears, it was nice to finally take classes on something that I loved and was passionate about. Columbia College Chicago played a big role when it came to me finding my writing voice. After I got out of high school, I was just writing things to be shocking. When I got to Columbia, I realized my stories all sounded the same and they were only dark for the sake of being dark, with very little substance. It took me at least one semester to get that out of my system, and that’s when I think I really started to grow as a writer. So I have absolutely no regrets about majoring in Fiction Writing. My family worried at first, but when they went to orientation with me at Columbia, they fell in love with the school and the program.

Who are your favorite authors?

Too many to name. My top favorites have to be Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Yates, Raymond Carver, Chuck Palahniuk, and Stephen King.

Are there authors that you think you’ve drawn from for inspiration in developing your own style?

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is what made me want to write stories in First Person. I loved the flow, the language, the dread… he just pulled it off amazingly. A lot of my earlier stories before I went to college definitely had a little of him thrown into them.

Raymond Carver is the biggest influence to me when it comes to short stories. Like I’ve mentioned before, one of my biggest problems when I first started out was I was trying to write stories with really outrageous and overcomplicated plots. Carver showed me that you didn’t need any of that. He showed that you could write stories about everyday things and everyday people and make them interesting. Without Carver, there would be no In Decline.

What is the last book you read by a fellow indie author and what did you think of it?

I’ve been all over the place with books lately, but the last one I finished was Freeze by Daniel Pyle. I absolutely loved it. Couldn’t put it down. It was scary and creepy, but he also gave you characters that you really cared about.

Tell us something about yourself that would surprise most people.

Even though I write about really depressing and disturbing things, I’m really a big goofball.

For more Michael

Michael sometimes posts on his blog. You can also like his page on Facebook or follow him on twitter.

Find Michael's books at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Reviews

A Gnome Problem

In Decline

A Land of Ash (Contributor)

Lessons III: Demonic Dolls and Other Morbid Drabbles

Lessons IV: The Dead Carnival and Other Morbid Drabbles

Author Interview: Susanne O'Leary

"I am often inspired to write about people who step out of their lives, peeling off all the labels that society have stuck on them and becoming someone new and more ‘real’. It’s as if I want to give them a chance to wipe the slate clean and start again."

You’ve led an interesting life. A native Swede who now lives in Ireland and you’ve lived … maybe I should let you tell it. How did you get from Sweden to Ireland and where and why for all the stops in between?

It was all because of this handsome Irishman I met when I was 19. He had just started his diplomatic career and his first posting took him to Stockholm, where we met. We were married a year later and he was subsequently posted to Australia, where we spent 3 ½ years. Diplomats generally change posting every four years or so and my husband’s career took us first back to Ireland, then to Paris, Brussels and The Netherlands. When my husband left the diplomatic service, we settled in Ireland, where we now live.

Have you always wanted to be a writer? What was the impetuous to write your first novel?

I can’t say that I always wanted to be a writer, but I did play with the idea from time to time as I grew up. But It wasn’t until I wrote my two health and fitness books (I’m also a trained keep fit teacher) that I discovered a love of writing. So, when I finished the second health book, my editor encouraged me to keep writing and suggested I try my hand at writing a fun novel about the trials and adventures of a diplomat’s wife. I had so many incidents from my diplomatic career to draw on, some of them bordering on the ridiculous, that it wasn’t hard to find inspiration. That’s how my first novel Diplomatic Incidents (the Kindle version was renamed Duty Free) came about. I didn’t really believe it would ever be published, but after a year of submissions and rejections, I finally got an offer from a publisher in Ireland. I had so much material that I decided to write a second book, this time based on what goes on at the European Union headquarters in Brussels, which became European Affairs (the e-book version is now called Villa Caramel).

One of your books, Swedish for Beginners, involves Maud, a woman who has moved around a lot like you and currently lives in Ireland. She discovers that her mother, who she never knew, was Swedish and that she has a lot of family in Sweden. On the surface, with the exception of the two countries involved, her story is much different from your own. But it does delve into the meaning of family and what it means to have “roots.” How do you think your own experiences helped you in telling Maud’s story?

I think my own confused feeling about my roots helped to create the theme of the book. When you live in one country but have your roots, family and childhood friends in the country where you were born, it creates emotional problems that I don’t think can ever be resolved. You are torn between your country of origin and the place where you live, never really feeling settled anywhere. It’s a case of chronic homesickness.

Maud in the story is quite settled at first but when she finds out that her mother was from Sweden and that she has close relations there, she is yanked out of her comfort zone and pitched into a family she never knew she had. When she travels to Stockholm and is confronted by this new family, its secrets and conflicts, her life, emotions and feelings of loyalty are turned upside down. As a result, she is very confused and has to rethink her whole life and who she really is. This is something I have had to do often, especially whenever I come back to Ireland after having spent a long time in Sweden. It’s very unsettling but at the same time enriching, as I get the chance to ‘belong’ to two culturally different countries and, through my husband and children, call them both ‘mine’.

Another of your books, A Woman’s Place and its sequel, Sonja’s Place, had an interesting genesis. Tell us about the inspiration for these books and how the writing process was different from your other books.

I had always heard about Sonja, my mother’s first cousin, who had an exciting life. She went to New York in the late 1920s and became the social secretary to the wife of a millionaire. Her letters home were full of fascinating details of the kind of ‘Great Gatsby’ lifestyle she led for a few years. I had been playing with the idea of writing a novel based on her life for quite some time. When I went through my grandmother’s chest of drawers in search of more material about Sonja, I came across letters and diaries by her mother, my Great Aunt Julia. These letters revealed a family scandal that nobody had ever known about before. It also told the story of an equally fascinating life and of a woman with a great sense of adventure. I decided to go further back in time and tell Julia’s story first, against the backdrop of an even more interesting time in the history of women’s emancipation. I would then add Sonja’s story in the last half of the book, ending in 1930. This became A Woman’s Place.

I thought I had said goodbye to these two women but my readers wanted to find out what happened next to Sonja. I hesitated at first, as I thought I had run out of material. But when my mother moved house, she found another box of letters, this time from Sonja’s subsequent life in New York and they revealed a story that was so moving I just had to share it with the readers who had become so fond of her while reading the first book. This second book became Sonja’s Place and it proved to be just as popular with readers as the first.

The writing process with these two books was very different from writing pure fiction. I had the letters which told if not all, at least most of the story and I used quotes from them to make the heroines more alive and give them their own voice. In this way, I felt they were speaking to the reader directly and telling their story themselves, which was quite eerie at times. I also had to do a lot of research about the period, the politics, way of life, dress, food, modes of transport and so on, which took a lot of time. I did this by reading fiction set in those eras and also history books and articles on the Internet. In this way, I learned so much about the period from 1899 to 1940 or so and about the struggles women had to go through in those days.

Most of your books fit somewhere under the big umbrella of “women’s fiction,” whether romance, chick lit, or something else. Even the two historical fiction books are going to primarily appeal to the same audience. However, your book Virtual Strangers is a wild card. While its main female character would have been a good fit in a chick-lit book, Virtual Strangers is a mystery. It also was co-written. Tell us about this book, your co-author, and how it came about.

Ola Zaltin, my co-writer, and I met on a writer’s site a few years ago. He is a TV and film script writer by profession and has written the scripts to many mainly Scandinavian crime series.

Ola and I became virtual friends very quickly, probably because we were both Swedes living abroad, even though I am a novelist and he is a very talented script writer with an impressive career. We spent something like a year chatting on this site, where there was a lot of drama, trolling and many flame wars. I don’t know whose idea it was to write a crime novel together but it seemed like a fun idea to me and we wanted to use our experiences of our Internet adventures. I also really wanted to try something new. I needed to bring a dark edge to my writing and that is what Ola did. He is a brilliant writer and can create a feeling of threat with just a few lines of dialogue or descriptive prose. He is also hilariously funny with that dark side that really suits a crime novel such as this one. His knowledge of police procedures in a homicide case is an added bonus.

As we developed the plot and connected on Facebook, I began to realise that this virtual socializing is very seductive and that it can become a kind of escape from the dreariness of one’s real life. This made me think that it would be interesting to explore the question of real versus virtual life and how some people possibly create a completely different online persona to that of their real life. My heroine, Annika, is just such a person, seeking an escape from her own horrible reality and creating an online, other ‘self’ that has a more interesting life. She gets the socializing she lacks from her virtual friends and foolishly connects with all the wrong people with frightening and disastrous results.

When Ola and I discussed the plot of the book, we felt we wanted to bring in that threat on a personal level that can often be felt on the Internet. Writing together, we brought a lot of our own relationship into the book, including some our often rather heated arguments. Many readers have asked if he is really Seabee and am I Annika? In a way-yes, absolutely and that’s probably why the characters have seemed very real to many readers. We are now working on a sequel, this time set in Stockholm, and I think it will be even better than the first book.

Where do you get the inspiration for the stories in your books?

Mostly from things that have happened to me in real life. I have that light-bulb-what-if-moment and then I can’t wait to write the story. You could say that my stories are plot driven when I start writing. For example, when we were sharing a chalet in the Alps with friends on a skiing trip, I thought to myself: what if we were snowed in for a couple of days. How would we cope and how would we interact with each other? It would be interesting to see the glitzy surface of some of the people begin to crack in such a situation, I thought. That became Fresh Powder. I got the idea for Finding Margo in the same way; were lost on the motorway in France (my fault) and had a flaming row. I thought; what if this couple had a similar experience and then the wife decided to run away?

If you had to describe what your books have in common that make them unique from another author’s, what would it be?

I usually set my books in exotic locations, using my own globetrotting experience. The setting is very important to me in any story and I try to describe the scenery with all my senses: sight, feel, smell and touch. I am not really anchored in any one place and I think I bring the readers on a kind of journey.

I also think there is an element of escape in all my books, where the protagonists are brought into new environments and experience things that change their lives completely. I am often inspired to write about people who step out of their lives, peeling off all the labels that society have stuck on them and becoming someone new and more ‘real’. It’s as if I want to give them a chance to wipe the slate clean and start again.

You published several of your books the old fashioned way, with an agent and a traditional publisher. You’ve since republished those as an indie along with several new books. What do you see as the advantages of the indie route? What have been the biggest challenges as an indie?

Even if being an ‘indie’ carries with it a certain stigma, it is far more satisfying than being traditionally published. Of course, the highs of being traditionally published were many but the lows of rejections, waiting to hear about submissions and not having full creative freedom, added to sharing 15% and more of my often puny earnings with said publishers and agents, were things I was very happy to leave behind. 

The biggest challenges of my ‘indie’ life has been trying to raise my profile and all the hard work and many hours spent on the Internet doing promotions. But I have felt more and more that this is my golden era, the high point of my career, when I can follow my own star and not have to ask anyone for permission to write what or the way I want and to make my own decisions when it comes to cover art, writing blurbs or do marketing in my own way. I have also really enjoyed being in touch with readers from all over the world, which was not possible when I was with a publishing house.

You’ve recently signed with a small publisher. Tell us about that deal and what you see as the advantages they provide.

I was happy to continue doing my own thing with all my books, except my detective series, which required a little more effort and expertise.

When I wrote Virtual Strangers with fellow Swedish author Ola Zaltin, I was going into a genre with which I was not familiar. Stimulating and fun to write, I still felt this needed added support with editing, marketing and publicity. We needed to have our book up with others in the same genre and also the approval and encouragement from someone who was in the same boat and could give us help with editing.

Stephen Hulse of Blue Hour Publishing is a writer himself and experienced in writing detective stories. His new venture is brand new and I felt it would be exciting to try this kind of publishing. I see it more as a kind of partnership but not just that. I felt it would be exciting to be part of a different way of publishing with someone who has the courage to go out there and make a difference in the vast ocean of e-publishing. A joint effort with many voices to help make a name for ourselves as part of both a publishing house and a group of individual authors. It will take time before this gets off the ground properly but I am already enjoying working with Stephen and his team. I think I have come to the stage in my writing career where I want to do things that are fun and interesting, even if it involves taking a risk. That said, even though you are working with someone you like and trust, it’s important to read the contract carefully and make sure there is a way out if you should want to leave.

With the North American market being such a large share of the marketplace for English language indie books, do you think there are challenges European authors face that are different from those of US and Canadian authors?

I have to say that I have been both delighted and surprised by the way American readers have reacted to my books. I actually sell more there than anywhere else and have been in touch with many readers from all over the US. I have a feeling that this might be because many Americans have European roots and love to read books that are set here.

Of course, the fact that many American words are spelled differently to British English could be a stumbling block for those who have learned English over here. And some reviewers have remarked on the spelling in my book. But I think that American readers are beginning to accept and become more familiar with British spelling, so I am sure this will not be such an issue in the future. Now I just put “British spelling” in my product descriptions, so I hope American readers can accept that as readily as British readers accept American spelling.

Tell us something about yourself that would surprise most people.

I don’t know if this would surprise anyone but, although my speaking voice is quite pleasant, I have a terrible singing voice. Think nails on a blackboard. If you ever heard it, you would pay me a lot of money not to sing. Seriously.

What are you working on now and what are your future writing plans.

I am at the moment working with my co-writer, Ola, on the sequel to Virtual Strangers. But we don't really want it to be an proper sequel but a stand-alone book so that readers can enjoy it even if they haven't read the first one. The working title is Virtual Suspects and it's set in Stockholm, where Seabee and Annika run a workshop on Scandinavian crime writing for authors from all over the world. Expect a lot of intrigue, horrific murders (we're really going to town on the blood and guts Scandy-style here), humour and romance. There will also be online cyber intrigues between e-book authors and publishers. We are having a lot of fun writing about the setting we know best: our hometown Stockholm. We're hoping to publish it in late October.

For more Susanne:

Visit Susanne's website or blog. You can also friend her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

You can find Susanne's many books from her Amazon Author's page, either Amazon.com or Amazon UK.

Also, read Book's and Pals review of Virtual Strangers.